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Boeing has made the fewest deliveries of its 737 Max since last year, as quality problems at the plane maker force a slowdown in production.
Just 16 Maxes were delivered to airlines and lessors last month, the company said on Tuesday, dropping from 24 in March and the fewest since last September. Boeing made 24 deliveries overall.
The decline comes as Boeing reels from an accident in January, when a door panel blew out from a 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines shortly after take-off. While no passengers were seriously injured, it sparked multiple investigations by US authorities.
Since January, Boeing has had “quality stand-downs” at more than 20 sites in the US, UK and Australia, including its 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington. The events involve halting production to focus on improving safety and quality. Chief executive Dave Calhoun told investors last month it was working to improve processes including training and inspections.
Boeing is also no longer accepting 737 Max fuselages that do not meet specifications from its supplier Spirit AeroSystems. The goal is to eliminate “travelled work”, where jets move through the production line with problems addressed later in the assembly process.
Quality problems also led to the slowdown in 737 Max deliveries last September, when only 15 were received by customers after Spirit had incorrectly drilled holes in the rear pressure bulkhead for some fuselages.
Deliveries are important to the amount of cash that Boeing takes in, since customers pay the bulk of the price when they receive their planes. Boeing reported that it used $3.9bn in free cash during the first quarter, compared with the use of less than $800mn a year earlier.
The low number of Max deliveries in April will be one of the factors contributing to what chief financial officer Brian West has said will be “another sizeable use of cash” in the second quarter.
After the Alaska Airlines accident, a preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found the four bolts meant to secure the panel to the fuselage were missing.
The US Federal Aviation Administration has also launched investigations and found “multiple instances” where Boeing and Spirit failed to meet manufacturing and quality requirements. The US Department of Justice is investigating whether Boeing met standards laid out in a $2.5bn agreement to defer criminal prosecution for misleading regulators in relation to a design flaw that led to two fatal crashes of the 737 Max in 2018 and 2019.
Deliveries of the 737 Max have fluctuated since the FAA lifted the grounding on the jet in November 2020, from a low of four in April 2021 to a high of 54 in December 2022.